


Deacon and Bullseye and the Big Brotherhood Brouhaha

by Tracks



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9483509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tracks/pseuds/Tracks
Summary: Deacon and Bullseye do a job for the Brotherhood. It goes about as well as one might expect.





	

“You trust the Brotherhood way too much.”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe you just don't trust the Brotherhood way too much _enough_.”

Deacon wanted to scream with frustration. Every time Bullseye ran another errand for the Brotherhood of Steel, they had the same tired argument. Usually, Scribe Haylen would send them off to some backwater hellhole with a vague description of pre-war tech which may or may not still be there, but this last time they were jumped by Knight Rhys the moment they entered the station. It seemed some Gunners were holed up on a nearby overpass, and instead of having trained soldiers equipped with the best armor in the Commonwealth deal with it, they wanted to send the recently-defrosted woman from the past and the man whose specialty was  _espionage, goddammit_ into the lion's den. Specifically, Rhys had wanted to send just Bullseye, citing some bull about “Brotherhood business”. Bullseye nodded and turned to leave, called over her shoulder

“C'mon Deacon, we're gonna go blow up some gunners,” and barely suppressed her shit-eating grin until the police station's doors closed behind them. Deacon had made no effort at all to hide his laughter, but did wait until they were outside to begin anew the (ultimately futile) task of convincing her to just stop cleaning up the Brotherhood’s messes already.

The overpass in question was a short hike away from the police station, just visible in the distance from where Deacon and Bullseye currently stood. Not much in the way of cover the rest of the way there; a couple of rusted barrels, an overturned car. Enough open space to put Deacon on edge, and noplace sheltered enough to set up a sniper's nest. He had a nasty feeling that this would turn into a run-and-gun affair, the kind they barely walked away from alive.

“You know, I hear the Brotherhood has these great robot dogs now. They can do practically anything. Chase a ball, give haircuts, flush out murderous raiders, you name it. If we left and got drunk at the Dugout instead, they'd probably just send in those and boom! Job done. What do you say?” He didn't expect her to believe something that far-fetched (although he would consider it his greatest achievement if she did); he just needed something to fill the empty space between them and almost certain death.

“We'll wait until night to attack them,” Bullseye replied, “They'll see us coming too soon if we don't. Only way onto the overpass is over there,” she pointed far off to their right, where the overpass had collapsed to the ground, “so we don't begin shooting until we get there. Until then, their height advantage makes us sitting ducks. Once we're up, we kill everything that moves. Sound easy enough?”

“Easy as radscorpion pie. Did you know that can kill you if you have open wounds in your mouth? The baking process only makes the venom more potent. I was a five-star chef at Tenpenny, down in DC; got kicked out 'cuz they thought I was an assassin.”

“If we get separated,” she continued, “we loop back and meet at the police station. It's a ways away, but still the closest safe place we know.”

There was a Railroad safehouse less than a mile away, Deacon knew. He turned to face the wasteland, giving Bullseye the side-eye from behind the safety of his sunglasses. They'd known each other for a while now. Long enough for her to have been the driving force behind the Railroad's recent victories, but also long enough for her to have shown equal dedication towards the Brotherhood of Steel. He couldn't risk trusting her with the safehouse's location, he decided. Not without knowing how much of her was Brotherhood. The Railroad was rebuilding, but they were still no match, hell, had never been a match for the Brotherhood. If she learned too much about them and decided to turn, it would be the final nail in their coffin. He sighed, letting his eyes fall back on the overpass before them. Working alone had been so much easier.

“Here,” he felt Bullseye press something into his hand. “This is a flare gun the Minutemen gave me. Don't make that face!” Deacon switched out his look of skepticism for a look of  _mild_ skepticism. She huffed in annoyance. “Look. If you get in trouble and can't make it back to the station, fire this off and the Minutemen will find you. In that case, go with them back to their settlement, and make your way to Sanctuary, okay? If I don't find you at the police station, I'll look for you there.”

“Yeah, yeah. The Minutemen will be my knights in shining armor. Excuse me while I swoon.” Deacon clipped the gun to his belt and sat down to wait until nightfall.

Continuing their streak of good luck, that night turned out to be cold and rainy, and by the time Bullseye gave him the signal to move they were both chilled to the bone and in foul moods. As they crept nearer to the overpass, a low, machine whirr made itself heard above the patter of rain.

“Turrets” he whispered to Bullseye. She nodded in response, and opened her mouth to reply-

_ Beep _

_ - _ and the mine one of them had stepped on (and there would be words about who was to blame for that, assuming they both survived) promptly exploded, peppering them both with shrapnel and setting alight a nearby car. From the overpass, Deacon heard shouts and saw the first Gunners run out of their makeshift buildings, guns trained on their position.

_ Well, that's a botch. Time to pull out! _ He thought. Before he could say the words, Bullseye made a break for the edge of the overpass.  _ Shit. _ Laser fire scorched the earth and bullets impacted around them as they sprinted into the cover provided by the ramshackle metal shacks the Gunners had built at the road's collapsed edge. Thin as they were, the walls provided sufficient protection, and Deacon set to the merry task of sniping at their owners.

“You know, back before I met you I'd go  _ whole days _ without massacring a bunch of things. Honest.” he quipped. Above them, the Gunners rained down bullets and lasers. For every one they put down, two more took their place, seemingly unaffected by the death of their comrades. Bullseye, in the face of such overwhelming force, had forsaken her usual strategy of charging into the fray and was instead crouched behind another shack twenty or so feet further up the incline. She was picking off their enemies with the laser rifle Danse had given her, now heavily modified to light its victims on fire. Deacon hated that gun, but he had to admire her creativity. She called back,

“Deacon, I'm gonna-” and froze, and for one heart-stopping moment he thought she'd been hit. The gunfire ceased, leaving a sudden silence broken only by a high whistle. Then, “Deacon, RUN!” She took a step, and-

-the metal wall he had been sheltering behind shook, framed by an explosion which burned itself onto his retinas. A moment later, the heat, noise, and wall hit him all at once, crushing him against the ground as his skin burned and his eardrums burst. He may have screamed; the ringing in his ears was too loud to be sure.

The guys back at HQ would never find his body, he realized with a pang. But, they would also never realize he'd died doing the Brotherhood's dirty work. Silver linings _._ He needed to cough, but he was sandwiched between the road and what felt like literal tons of rubble on top of him. Despite the heat of the explosion, he felt colder than he had ever been in his life, like the cold had reached his bones and was radiating out. That should worry him, he thought sluggishly. Why didn't it worry him?

Deacon faded out for a while, drifting in the space somewhere between memory and fever dreams, until finally he felt the rubble begin to shift above him. Somebody was digging him out. Above the ringing in his ears, he could just make out a low voice; male, not Bullseye's. One of the Gunners then. He'd lost his rifle in the explosion, but the flare gun was still clipped to his belt. It only had one shot, but at least he'd go down fighting.

Finally, the pressure lifted as the metal wall was pulled away to reveal a hulking, blurred figure haloed by bright sunlight. Deacon's eyes were so badly damaged by the explosion that he couldn't even make out a face, but the Commonwealth only grew one sort of creature that shape and size: super mutant. Despite its strength it appeared to be struggling to push aside the wall; it was just too bulky. Deacon used the extra time to reflect on his fate as the newest secret ingredient in those weird meat bags. His would be cooler than the others, he knew. Cool enough to still wear his sunglasses, even at night.

He allowed the idea to distract him from the herculean effort it took just to move as he stealthily drew the flare gun. The super mutant finally managed to hurl the wall away just as Deacon raised his arm. His aim was so shaky he would have been embarrassed if he wasn't mostly dead, but at such close range it hardly mattered. He fired the moment he had a clear shot.

Flares weren't meant to be shot at targets literally three feet away, he realized. It hit the mutant right in the chest and exploded, showering them both with burning shrapnel. He wasn't sure whether he should be grateful or worried that he couldn't feel it. For its part, the mutant shouted and backed away as it tried to brush off the burning remnants of the flare. While it was occupied, another figure darted forward, arms raised.

_Well, mission accomplished,_ Deacon thought,  _ time to die.  _ Something sharp stabbed into his neck, and the pain of his injuries hit him like a freight train. After several agonizing seconds it withdrew, taking with it the tinnitus and the certainty that he was about to meet his maker. His vision began to clear a moment later, and he realized with a start that there were people in front of him, not super mutants. Specifically, a worried-looking Bullseye and a distinctly less worried-looking Paladin Danse,  whose bulky power armor and general ugliness had been the source of Deacon’s mutant mix-up .

“You okay, Deacon?” Bullseye asked, empty stimpak still in hand.

_ I just got to shoot Danse with a flare gun,  _ Deacon thought.

“Golden. Just golden.” he grinned. “Never been better, honest.” He turned to Danse, pretending not to notice the large scorch mark which now marred the Brotherhood logo on his power armor. “So, what made you decide to stop by? Miss us too much?”

Danse turned to address Bullseye. “Initiate. We're done here; I expect you back at the station for a full debriefing no later than this time tomorrow. We'll return shortly after for the sweep and retrieve. Until then, leave this mess undisturbed.” With that, he left them, and moments later Deacon heard the thrum of a Vertibird taking off.

“Could have at least offered us a ride...” he groused, “seriously though. How did he know to come here?”

Wordlessly, Bullseye held out another flare gun in response.

“Hey, do you think the Minutemen and Brotherhood ever mix up who's supposed to respond to which flare? Did they have to color-coordinate?”

“That wasn't a two-person job.” Bullseye stated. She sat down on the ground next to him, her head in her hands.

“That's what I was telling y-”

“No. I mean.” she cut him off mid-sentence. “Deacon, they ordered two people to take out an entrenched nest of nearly  _ twenty _ Gunners, and they  _ knew. _ God, I wonder if Rhys hoped we'd die trying.” she murmured the last part more to herself.

“Bullseye, listen. You know how I feel about the Brotherhood, so, you know, take this with a grain of salt. But you have to look at what they're doing, not what they're saying. When they order their soldiers to take on an opponent against impossible odds, or to hold a position at all costs, they know what they're sending you to, and your chances of walking away from it. They know it, you know it, and no matter how bad it gets they expect you to obey them without question, because that's what you gave away to them when you joined. That choice to run, to live to fight another day instead of dying for their cause.”

“You'd die for the Railroad.”

“I would.” he agreed. “But Des will never order me to do it. When I die, it'll be entirely, one-hundred-percent my own fault.” That got a laugh out of her, bitter though it was.

“Forget the Railroad, you nearly died here. Deacon, I- I knew it would be dangerous going in and I still dragged you along with me, risked your life for a cause you don't even care about. God, I'm so sorry.” she murmured, her head in her hands.

Shit, feelings were really _not_ his area. “Uh, first of all,” he improvised, “I didn't nearly die. I just took a nap under a wall and let you and the tin can do all the heavy lifting. Which, great job by the way.” He made a show of craning his neck to look around at the bodies littering the overpass. “They look very dead. Second of all, I singlehandedly beat The Masticator in a boxing match, so there's no way you could drag me anywhere if I didn't want to go. And third of all,” he didn't have a third of all, but he was in way too deep to abort. “Third of all, there are a shit-ton of cars on that overpass just crying out to be exploded. You gonna deny them a chance to fulfill their dreams?” Nailed it.

Bullseye turned to look at the cars, then grinned back at Deacon. “Hey,” she said as she reached into her bag, “Speaking of stupid decisions, I snuck this before the Vertibird landed.” She pulled out what looked to be an oversized, open-topped rocket launcher, along with a couple of miniature nuclear warheads. “Great minds think alike, right?”

“I knew I liked you for a reason.”

When they returned for the sweep and retrieve two days later, the flames had not even begun to die out.


End file.
